


Torn

by shihadchick



Category: U2
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-09-04
Updated: 2005-09-04
Packaged: 2017-10-22 08:10:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/235969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shihadchick/pseuds/shihadchick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>dark thoughts at the end of things</p>
            </blockquote>





	Torn

**Author's Note:**

> For the 'another grape' challenge IV; involving a break-up, and the words lust, infatuation, pandemonium, trousers, and fade.

It’s frustrating, is what it is.

That’s about all he can verbalise even to himself, and vocalising it is well beyond him. It’s just… frustrating.

Not the fact that his quietness (well, all right, be fair, the fact he’s a little more quiet, a little drier and somewhat more sarcastic than usual) has been noted, or that he’s been getting those dreadful looks of sympathetic understanding. He’s not really sure whether it would be worse if no one had noticed or not. Equal frustrations, he decides, but in different ways, most like.

It would be easy – too easy, really – to assume that he would fade into the background beside a character like Bono, by comparison and in the face of him. Easy to miss (and the reports that Larry still assiduously clips from music journals and magazines seem to confirm this misinterpretation) that alongside the antics of his own supernova personae he is very much attuned to what’s going on around him. Always the first to shoot you that look of ‘go on now, what’s happening?’ always the first to take your elbow and lead you away for a quiet chat, to nudge you with a persistent hand in the small of your back into a soul-baring confession.

And not just for his friends, but anyone who caught his eye, or his heart. Bono will make time for anyone (or anything, and isn’t that part of their ongoing problems now, too?) that he feels is worth the effort. Not that he wants him to, right now, which is why he’s fobbing off every sympathetic advance that comes in his direction. Not the time for a quiet pint down at Dockers, or for letting himself be cornered in a quiet moment of a morning down at the studio, before the pandemonium that is fighting the new material into shape in the rare moments they have at home.

And there he is again, successfully distracting himself from the problem to hand. Thinking about Bono, of all people. Suppose it figures, given some of the more vicious, more poisonous rumours he’s overheard or read over the years. Some of them he was meant to, spitefully seeking a reaction (a retraction?), a confirmation or denial, others were more inadvertent finds. Silly, really. Considering.

It would have been so easy to fall into an infatuation with Bono.

Easier than it should be (he’s your friend, a voice reminds him, but he’s been ignoring this voice for years, not even in his register anymore, is it) but somehow despite that it just never happened. Despite the touches and looks onstage and off, the way Bono drapes himself around his neck on occasion, will kiss his check. Probably for the best, given how exquisitely uncomfortable that would have been all around, but there would have been an element of safety with Bono which he would have appreciated. But all he can see him as is a friend. A very good friend. A friend he quite desperately does not wish to discuss this with.

With Bono… there would have never been a ‘yes’, or, more accurately, the ‘oh, yes, please, wait, actually, I wasn’t- I didn’t mean and we can’t and you realise this isn’t going to happen again I’m sorry but I love her.’ No false apologies, no wrenching separation after a heartbreak. Heartbeat. Both and neither, really. With Bono it would have simply been a flat, understanding, temptation-flicker in the back of his eyes negation. Firm. Gentle. And teasing, later, before he would have thought he could take it, and just in time to be proved wrong.

Bono would notice (does notice) when he’s tense, when he’s grumpy or upset or just out of sorts with the world. Not always to do anything in response, or sometimes with just an understanding look, but he does try. It is, he thinks glumly, the absence of even a half-arsed attempt that really gets to him. That worms its way into his chest to set up bitter resenting residence. _That one_ doesn’t even _try_. Pretends not to realise.

Hell, he truly may _not_ realise. Why should he? Not as if he’s not under enough pressure himself as it is. More than most might suspect, and there’s an uncomfortableness in his possession of this knowledge. In his awareness that, rather than being the innocently conflicted party, he may have been the selfish bastard taking (momentary) advantage. Maybe this is all, as it seems, in his head. Lust and insanity and stress combining in a triple-whammy of unanticipated proportion and degree. But how hard is it (oh, and there’s a pun there, he thinks, rueful, shifting uncomfortably, resigned) to notice the little signs in a person’s face, in their body and tone, in what they say (and what they don’t.)

Bono can read him from a half-mile off, works that knowledge, that essential instinctive sharing of thought and intent of deed which functions so very well in their performances, and uses it to his advantage. To the group’s advantage, too, but there is a definte element of it being to his own. He’s too much the showman to have it any other way. And Edge has never had a problem with that aspect of him (and if he did, he’d have taken it up with Bono, and they’d have solved it, with words and maybe in verse and if they’d needed to – and they had on occasion, and there was the one part of them that didn’t really get publicised now, funny that – with their fists.)

 _That one_ can’t even read him (it seems) when he’s sat right by him, washed out and pale in the light of a flickering television set at four am, when he’s bare skin to bare skin, working out the kinks and knots in his back (friendly, mind, just friendly, shirts off but trousers on of course, because anything more than that is just Not Done, even in the bad old public school days.) Can’t read the shudder that rolls through him as frustrated wants and aches and _that hurts_ and _touch me more oh god please there, no- yes- ah, shite, ten minutes is up already?_ He can’t seem to tell the difference between a frown at too-hot coffee that burns the tongue in the morning and the disguised anguish that takes fleeting root upon his face (when he lets it, not often) at the thought of what is so close but absolutely out of reach.

Living together back home in Dublin, in hindsight, is probably not going to go on record as one of his wisest decisions. Spending that much time together on tour as well hasn’t done wonders for the relationship that’s falling down around his ears, either, because if _he_ is oblivious _she_ certainly is not and the whole reconciliation thing just went horribly, horribly pear-shaped. He should probably care more. Because this is going to have some sort of effect further down the line, certainly, no way to avoid the fallout after he carefully undermined one relationship in favour of another. In favour of someone who’ll carelessly tread on the last precious embers of what there was (could have been, making too much of it in his head _as always_ , one kiss hastily apologised for and never repeated does not a relationship make, no matter how _he_ might behave.)

But even if he had ever had a chance, he’s missed it now, well and truly. There’s a dark beauty on the horizon - not really on the horizon, he has to admit, not exactly a smudge on the lens, in fact, more or less a vital frontispiece, inescapable - and despite himself he can’t even resent her, which somehow makes it all the worse.

Instead, he can swallow back the remnants of what he felt and move on with his life. Put this behind him once and for all, for real this time. He doesn’t need this, not really. He could have anyone. Has. So he’ll do the honourable thing, and simply congratulate him on his new love. And when they inevitably step forward to announce an engagement or the equivalent (and won’t the tabloids have a field day with that – ‘belly-dancer’ even more headline-friendly than ‘supermodel’ had been) well, then he’ll be among the very first to raise a glass to them.

In fact - and what an attractive thought _that_ is - he could do as much right now.

  
There’s got to be some place in Sydney he can get a decent drink.


End file.
